Veranilda eBook

THE VANQUISHED ROMAN

Seven years long had the armies of Justinian warred
against the Goths in Italy. Victor from Rhegium
to Ravenna, the great commander Belisarius had returned
to the East, Carrying captive a Gothic king.
The cities of the conquered land were garrisoned by
barbarians of many tongues, who bore the name of Roman
soldiers; the Italian people, brought low by slaughter,
dearth, and plague, crouched under the rapacious tyranny
of governors from Byzantium.

Though children born when King Theodoric still reigned
had yet scarce grown to manhood, that golden age seemed
already a legend of the past. Athalaric, Amalasuntha,
Theodahad, last of the Amal blood, had held the throne
in brief succession and were gone; warriors chosen
at will by the Gothic host, mere kings of the battlefield,
had risen and perished; reduced to a wandering tribe,
the nation which alone of her invaders had given peace
and hope to Italy, which alone had reverenced and
upheld the laws, polity, culture of Rome, would soon,
it was thought, be utterly destroyed, or vanish in
flight beyond the Alps. Yet war did not come to
an end. In the plain of the great river there
was once more a chieftain whom the Goths had raised
upon their shields, a king, men said, glorious in youth
and strength, and able, even yet, to worst the Emperor’s
generals. His fame increased. Ere long he
was known to be moving southward, to have crossed
the Apennines, to have won a battle in Etruria.
The name of this young hero was Totila.

In these days the senators of Rome, heirs to a title
whose ancient power and dignity were half-forgotten,
abode within the City, under constraint disguised
as honour, the conqueror’s hostages. One
among them, of noblest name, Flavius Anicius Maximus,
broken in health by the troubles of the time and by
private sorrow, languishing all but unto death in
the heavy air of the Tiber, was permitted to seek
relief in a visit to which he would of his domains
in Italy. His birth, his repute, gave warrant
of loyalty to the empire, and his coffers furnished
the price put upon such a favour by Byzantine greed.
Maximus chose for refuge his villa by the Campanian
shore, vast, beautiful, half in ruin, which had been
enjoyed by generations of the Anician family; situated
above the little town of Surrentum it caught the cooler
breeze, and on its mountainous promontory lay apart
from the tramp of armies. Here, as summer burned
into autumn, the sick man lived in brooding silence,
feeling his strength waste, and holding to the world
only by one desire.